The Era of Gods

Lin Xu and Shen Yuexin certainly knew what these items were. They had the intention to refuse, but these two things were exactly what they currently lacked the most. Even Shen Yuexin, who was comparatively wealthy, didn’t have any to spare. They found themselves unable to voice their refusal.

Lin Xiao could see this and pushed the items towards them again:

“Here!”

This time, they did not refuse. Shen Yuexin graciously accepted and shook her pristine, small hand with a smile, “You have some conscience. You don’t have to pay back what you owed me.”

Lin Xiao….

Lin Xu reached out to take the statue and the magic cube, saying:

“This is exactly what I need, so 1 won’t be polite.”

“Don’t mention it; it’s what you deserve.”

Afterward, the three of them chatted for a while longer and exchanged some cards they didn’t need but suited one another, then they agreed to stay here for three more days before returning to the main world.

Having parted ways and returning to the dormitory, Lin Xiao immediately went back to his Divine Realm, scattering all the rewards and loot he had gathered in front of him. Cards shimmering with crystal and golden light floated in the air, surrounding a massive orb of light.

Rubbing his hands excitedly, what came next was the thrilling moment of unveiling the rewards.

The first step was, of course, to extract the Divine Kingdom fragment from within God’s Tomb and integrate it into his own Divine Realm. Many of the cards in his possession now required a much larger Divine Realm to be loaded.

With a pointing gesture, the orb of light suddenly brightened, and then strands of chaotic grey light flew out from it, rapidly expanding outward. As the master of the Divine Realm, Lin Xiao felt his Divine Realm slowly expanding.

His consciousness flew to the edge of the Divine Realm. He could see the void at the boundary bubbling like boiling oil, sizzling and puffing, as the expanse of the Divine Realm’s earth slowly grew in the wake of the retreating Chaos Energy, steadily expanding.

This…

Was a painstaking effort. Unlike the processed Divine Realm Cards that could be quickly loaded and integrated into the Divine Realm, this unprocessed fragment from a Divine Kingdom with Powerful Divine Power still retained remnants of its own rules. While merging with the Divine Realm, it was necessary to erode its foreign rules, which inevitably slowed the process.

However, there was no rush at present. As he expected, this whole loading process might take decades to complete. Currently, being in Subspace, it won’t take that long; once back in the main world, one day equates to one year in the Divine Realm. At the least, several dozen days to two or three months should suffice for a complete integration into his Divine Realm.

As for these cards, he might as well store them for now.

He anticipated that when the second year of high school starts, it would be difficult to acquire as many cards batch by batch as he did during the Summer Camp. By that time, course rewards are likely to be only cards of Golden Mythical Quality, and he’d have to revert to using lower-tier cards. He would need to wait until the complete integration of his God Country and Divine Realm to determine how to load them based on the status of his Divine Realm.

In any case, for Lin Xiao, the first semester of the second year of high school was a period of consolidation and growth; there was ample time to grow in a semester.

It wasn’t feasible to integrate the entire Divine Kingdom fragment into the Divine Realm right away, but other items from God’s Tomb could still be put to use.

Lin Xiao reached into the orb of light and grabbed several statues, including one of a massive dragon and another of a half-god vampire.

All these were adventurers who had entered the Divine Realm in the past. Even the weakest among them was a legend, with a few Divine Beings and about seven demigods. After giving away two, there were still five left, all turned into stone statues by Major General Keri.

They were now dead; their flesh and blood turned to unchangeable stone. Their once powerful bodies had become inert stone, good only as ornaments, but the residual Divinity within the bodies of the Divine Beings and demigods could still be extracted.

“Fantastic!”

Lin Xiao rubbed his hands vigorously and pointed at each statue, causing them to shatter.

When the statues of legendary heroes broke apart, nothing remained. Except for the enduring Divinity, everything else had faded to nonexistence over tens of thousands of years, leaving not even dregs behind.

He didn’t keep them as mere statues for decoration mainly because he wanted to see if there were any miracles…

Unsurprisingly, there weren’t. When all the legendary heroes’ statues shattered, no trace of them was left—not a scrap of their flesh and blood, which had completely petrified into ordinary stone, just a bit harder than usual.

All the remains were thrown into the Divine Realm; then, Lin Xiao’s gaze fell on the statues of the four Divine Beings.

Among the four Divine Beings was a human, a dwarf, a vampire, and a giant lion over five or six meters tall and nearly ten meters long, its mane like flames.

He pointed and shattered the dwarf. In the grey stony head, there was an egg-sized piece of stone with traces of dark red flesh, flickering dimly with golden light.

He reached out to capture the Divinity into his hand, then put it away.

He proceeded to smash the remaining three Divine Beings, most of whom contained only a bit of Divinity, with the majestic flame lion yielding two points of Divinity, bringing the total gain to five points.

“Not bad!”

The haul was almost comparable to all his previous accumulations, not to mention the five demi-god statues that possessed even more Divinity.

Of course, it was not as many as imagined because these Demigods had struggled in the God’s Tomb, just like that Snake People Demigod who faced a desperate situation and would definitely struggle desperately, even to the point of Burning Divinity for a burst of power—this was inevitable. Thus, it would certainly be impossible to harvest five intact Demigods.

However, even if incomplete, the leftover Divinity from five Demigods would definitely amount to more than ten, and possibly even over twenty points. Along with the previous five points and his own, Lin Xiao’s incoming Divinity might surpass that of Wu Zhonglin.

Arriving in front of the Vampire Demi-god Statue with an exhilarated heart, a Demigod whose name commanded respect in any realm had been reduced to a stone statue, dying here in nameless silence.

With a tap, the statue shattered, and a handsome head fell off and split open. Lin Xiao was surprised to find that the head of this Vampire Demigod still retained flesh and blood; the rest of the body was completely petrified, but the brain retained some semblance of life due to the residual Divine Power and leftover five points of Divinity.

Most crucially, he sensed a thread of extremely weak life force within this still-vivid head. Was this Vampire Demigod not completely fallen?

But thinking about it, this seemed normal. This Vampire Demigod, like them, was among the last batch to enter the God’s Tomb. It might not even have been half a year since he turned into a statue, so it wasn’t surprising that he hadn’t died completely.

“Hmm, this is going to be tricky!”

Directly snuffing him out seemed like a waste. Holding the Creation Magic Cube, it seemed there could be other, better uses for it.

In that instant, several cunning ideas came to Lin Xiao’s mind.

After pondering for a moment, he summoned the Creation Magic Cube, created an independent space within, and decided to collect the object first before making further plans.

He then examined the other four Demigod statues, which represented a Human, an Elf, a Fishman, and that Dragon, which was also a Demigod.

These four Demigods had died a long time ago, at least ten thousand years before, and were completely deceased.

Lin Xiao found three, five, six, and eight Divinity points respectively within their remains totaling twenty-two units of Divinity. The Dragon Demigod had the most residual Divinity, probably because it had been a High-Level Demigod in life, and with the innate talents of the Dragon Clan, it must have been the strongest being to fall within the God’s Tomb.

Apart from the temporarily reserved five Divinity points from the Vampire Demigod, the three Demigod statues provided twenty-two units of Divinity, added to the previously accumulated five points from the Divine Beings, and the Divinity Card, as well as the five points of Divinity from the Vampire Demigod Avatar. Lin Xiao now had thirty-four points of Divinity in his possession, becoming instantly wealthy.

However, not all this Divinity could be fused into himself.

With the Vampire Demigod’s Divinity set aside for now, he didn’t plan to use all of the remaining twenty-nine points for himself. He had an idea: while he had an abundance of Divinity at hand, could he perhaps select a few promising individuals from his Clan and grant them Divinity to elevate them to Divine Beings?

For example, the Epic Hero, Naga Slardar, who was already a Hero. If he could be turned into a Divine Being, his strength would undoubtedly become much more formidable, and his potential even greater.

It’s good to be strong oneself, but focusing too much in one area is not ideal. Only when the entire Divine Realm is powerful can one ensure stable development and a brighter future.

After all, if his Divine Realm were powerful enough, they would have the strength to vie for interests on his behalf.

Moreover, non-Divine Beings only need to fuse with one point of Divinity to start with. He estimated that granting no more than five points of Divinity should be sufficient, and the remaining twenty-four points could be kept for himself.

After collecting all the statues from the God’s Tomb, what remained was a pure Divine Kingdom fragment, waiting to be slowly integrated into his own Divine Realm.

Having completed these tasks, Lin Xiao finally had the time to turn his attention to the interior of his Divine Realm.

It had been some time since he had returned to the Divine Realm. The changes inside were not significant, mainly because not much time had passed.

There weren’t many changes in the wilderness of the Divine Realm. The Flower Fairy population remained the same, the Little Elemental Fairies were still frolicking underwater, the Little Dragon Turtle had not grown up yet, and the Lobstermen Tribe seemed to have expanded a bit.

On the mainland, the Naga City had been further developed. The Supreme Naga population had increased by dozens of newborns, and the city now featured many new-style buildings that looked more refined.

He examined closely, these new-style buildings originated from the satellite city where the Wise Goblins lived. After a static period, they had set their sights on their own place, presumably finding the houses built by the Naga and Fishmen for them rough and unsightly, thus they attempted to create new homes by themselves. Now, the results seemed quite good.

The development of the Divine Realm was stable, and the Clan was living well—without any worries for food or clothing. Every day, large numbers of Fishmen and Supreme Naga went to the Ancient Arena to train.

Although they didn’t have the Power of Faith to activate the experience bonus of the Ancient Arena, it did not close during normal times and could still be utilized. However, without the Power of Faith, victory in battle would not grant additional combat or job experience, only basic combat experience and improvement in job skill proficiency. It was unable to promote advancement, but it ensured that combat power wouldn’t deteriorate.

This facility was powerful, but the consummation of the Power of Faith was too terrifying for him at the moment, preventing him from keeping it open at all times.

He could only wait until the Clan grows larger and the daily accumulation of the Power of Faith was sufficient to maintain frequent use.

After reviewing his Divine Realm, Lin Xiao withdrew his gaze, satisfied. He stretched out his palm and a ball of light appeared within it—it was the shattered outer shell of the Crystal Wall System’s Core.

He tried summoning the Creation Magic Cube to absorb it, closed his eyes to feel it out for a while, then opened his eyes again, revealing a wry smile: “Damn, ten units of Creation Energy are needed to repair a single crack, that’s just absurd!”

He counted, and there were sixteen cracks on it, which meant it would take one hundred and sixty units of Creation Energy to repair—this was simply…

To think that a Rank i Ancient Treasure could only be decomposed into one to three units of Creation Energy, and even a Rank 3 Top-tier Heirloom only consisted of thirty to forty units. Would this not mean needing to disassemble four or five Top-tier Heirlooms just to gather enough Creation Energy for repairs?